Symbolic Victories Are Often Real Losses

Judging from his statements and the note he left in his car, James von Brunn walked into the Holocaust Museum believing that he was about to strike a blow against Jewish world hegemony and Federal gun-control. Even by his twisted standards, his actions were counterproductive. His plan was to massacre people visiting and working at the holocaust museum, and to symbolically harm Jews, whom he believed were looting non-Jewish people through their control of the government and the financial industry among others.

Let us examine, though, the effects of von Brunn’s attack. He murdered a security guard, Stephen T. Johns (who, it should be noted, had courteously opened the door let in the man who would murder him). Within hours, the security guards who shot von Brunn down were rightly being lionized, and by extension, the entire apparatus of security-guards-cum-metal-detectors that have come to characterize the modern U.S. People started agitating for further limitations on weapons ownership, freedom of speech and against organizations that agitate for freeing people from government oversight. There was a massive outpouring of sympathy for Jews. Two days after von Brunn’s attack, about the time doctors were concluding that he would survive his wounds, the Holocaust museum was open for business. No doubt within a week they will have hired Stephen Johns’ replacement.

In other words, from von Brunn’s perspective he lost: he suffered life threatening wounds, incited in people a hatred of his movement, shot an easily replaced, ‘expendable’ guard and shut a museum down for one day while giving it lots of free publicity.

Much as we libertarians abhor murderous savages like von Brunn, we should take note of the effects of his attack. His attack is one of many that all demonstrate an important rule of resistance against the state. Like John Brown’s attack on Harper’s Ferry, the assassination of McKinley, and countless other acts of symbolic violence, von Brunn’s attack discredited his movement and increased sympathy for his opponents.

While such chest-thumping is very satisfying, and satisfies a psychological need to feel powerful, it is usually a losing strategy; any action that swings sympathy towards our opponents will make us weaker. The psychology of crowds is fairly well understood. Crowds hate the weak. Paradoxically, crowds also envy the powerful. They want security and to live free of fear and uncertainty. They don’t care about philosophy, and their conception of justice and morality is a crude, instinctual one that is the product of human evolution.

Turning the mob in a pro-freedom direction requires a combination of the following:

Inciting in people a hatred and contempt of the political classes and the bureaucrat and police who do their bidding.

Making people aware of how badly the political classes are ripping them off.

Developing institutions that perform social functions that do not use coercion to acquire resources.

Encouraging people to rely on themselves and those institutions.

Most violent/semi-violent protests incite in people a fear of the protestors. The people then turn to the government to protect them from the scary protestors. When the protests or political actions or symbolic acts of vandalism don’t accomplish any meaningful change, the net result is a stronger, more powerful government that has been given permission to suppress the movement that the symbolic act was meant to promote.

Successful protest movements like the black civil rights movement succeeded precisely because the symbolic acts encouraged people to identify with the protesters. When the police set german shepherds on black people walking in orderly columns, the people seeing the images and video saw the police as the dangerous mob and the protesters as being the civilized, non-threatening party to the conflict.

I am an anarcho-capitalist living just west of Boston Massachussetts. I am married, have two children, and am trying to start my own computer consulting company.

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http://anarchangel.blogspot.com Chris Byrne

Ooooh, you’re gonna get Billy Beck, Mike Vanderboegh, and the threepers all mad at you ;-)

http://www.thelibertypapers.org/author/tarran/ tarran

What the heck is a threeper?

I googled it, and nobody seems to define it although in context it seems to refer to a truculent movement of gun-owners.

http://anarchangel.blogspot.com Chris Byrne

Pretty much. It’s essenially a rebellionist fantasy movement; though they take themselves VERY seriously.

Basically they believe that all it takes is 3 percent of a populace to rise up in armed rebellion (given proper circumstances) in order to overthrough our socialist overlords.

Further, they believe that either they already have that three percent, or will soon be able to achieve that three percent, and the right conditions for such a rebellion shortly as the socialist abuses keep piling up.

http://www.thelibertypapers.org/author/tarran/ tarran

Ah. In other words, blowhards.

If the draft didn’t make them rise up, what would? Why didn’t they rise up when the income tax was jacked up to the point where the top bracket was 90%? When the patriot act was passed, they didn’t rise up. When the Branch Davidians were massacred over a $250.00 unpaid tax-bill, they didn’t rise up. When Nixon instituted price controls they didn’t rise up. When bush nationalized the financial industry they didn’t rise up.

If I were a government official, I would be laughing at their self-importance.

southernjames

I had never heard of the phrase “three percenters” either. But based on what I been able to determine from googling that, googling Mike Vanderboegh (who I had also never heard of) etc., I did run across this, from some “three percenter” site.

“Three Percenters today do not claim that we represent 3% of the American people, although we might…. We DO claim that we represent at least 3% of American gun owners…..The Three Percent today are gun owners who will not disarm, will not compromise and will no longer back up at the passage of the next gun control act. Three Percenters say quite explicitly that we will not obey any further circumscription of our traditional liberties and will defend ourselves if attacked. We intend to maintain our God-given natural rights to liberty and property, and that means most especially the right to keep and bear arms.”

I also saw a lot of connected links to Ron Paul and Libertarian stuff in my searches.

Seems simply like a more ‘hard core’ version of the attitudes concerning the growing oppressive power of big government, collectivism, etc, which are lauded daily on this site. The three-percenters appear (to me) to be a collection of Paulian-types whose “thing” rather than being, e.g., connecting Bush to 9-11 or to Bush installing Fascism in America, is instead an intense passion for opposing any sort of gun control, and being belligerently vocal about it.

So describing it as a “rebellionist” movement consisting of a bunch of total nutjobs fantasizing about actually “rising up” to overthrow the government, (and who, if they were legitimate, would have done so over the military having a draft) would appear to be inaccurate. Unless I haven’t stumbled upon the right sites.

It cracks me up, what classifies as being praise-worthy from some of the regulars and “Contributors” to this site, versus what deserves to be trashed and mocked.

And I highly doubt that any Obama administration officials are “laughing” at the “self importance,” of people like that. More like classifying them as one of their “domestic terrorism threats,” I would suspect. And planning to use them and tie those types in with certain acts of gun violence, in order to justify a push for more firearms/ammo/firearm manufacturing restrictions.